Next Mortal Kombat Hopes to "Revolutionize" Online Play

[Keane Ng]

Next Mortal Kombat Hopes to "Revolutionize" Online Play

Warner Bros. has big ambitions for Mortal Kombat 9, which they say is going to have features that will do no less than "revolutionize online play."

When Mortal Kombat creator Ed Boon confirmed that the next Mortal Kombat game would take a trip back to the blood-stained fields of M-rated games [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/92546-Mortal-Kombat-Kreator-Konfirms-Next-Kombat-Will-Be-M-Rated] after a T-rated departure in Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe, I thought that was about enough to satisfy any Kombat fans with doubts about the next game. Apparently, however, publisher Warner Bros. wants this game to do more than be gory and thrill youth desensitized to the sight of spines being ripped out of bodies whole.

According to this job listing [https://careers.timewarner.com/1033/ASP/TG/cim_searchresults.asp?type=mail&PartnerId=391&SiteId=36&Language=1&Function=mailtofriend&verityquery=%28+PartnerId%3D391+%29%3C%23AND%3E%28+SiteId%3D%2736%27+%29+%3C%23AND%3E%28dateopen+%3C%3D+2009%2F08%2F07%29%3C%23AND%3E%28dateclosed+%3E%3D+2009%2F08%2F07%29%3C%23AND%3E%28+%3CANY%3E%28503928%29+%3CIN%3E+ReqId%29&SearchLanguageList=34%2C23%2C1&view=View+jobs] over at Time Warner, the publisher, which recently acquired the majority of Midway's intellectual properties, Kombat included, the next game will look to "position Mortal Kombat as the 'gold standard' for network play," and an engineer is sought who "wants to push the boundaries of what is possible with online interaction."

Now this could just be big talk to get would be applicants excited about working on Mortal Kombat, or it could be an example of some serious ambition. Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe had perfectly functional if rudimentary online play - I thought it was plenty satisfactory, and I'm not exactly sure how you could push it any further.

Warner Bros. obviously thinks otherwise. They conclude the posting by saying that the lucky person who gets this job will be "owning the final implementation of brand-new features that will revolutionize online play." Short of having the characters pop out of your TV and into your living room, I'm not sure what this could mean.

[Via Gamasutra [http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=24799]]


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[Radeonx]

Hopefully this Mortal Kombat will be good. I didn't like the last few. And that picture is awesome. Super awesome.

 

[Earthbound]

Wonder what they plan on doing to "revolutionize online play." It's just a blood-and-guts fighting game, though a good one at that. They're going to have to do something really off-the-wall, and that's what I'm hoping for. Also, that picture really is awesome.

 

[Quadtrix]

I though Mortal Kombat had finally died?

 

[Haydyn]

Too little, too late. MKvsDC ended my love affair with Mortal Kombat. They would have to give me my money back for MKvsDC if they wanted me to buy another game.

 

[SharPhoe]

I though Mortal Kombat had finally died?

Armageddon will be the last game to use the original cast. They're still going, though.

 

[Lord Beautiful]

"Revolutionize?" Somehow I doubt that. Mortal Kombat doesn't exactly have a great history of "revolutioning" anything, except how most stereotypical old people see video games, who previously saw games as toys, but then saw them as vicious murder simulators (after all, kids who play Mortal Kombat are more likely to shoot lightning from their fingertips at puppies wrapped in copper).

Until the designers finally manage to make the Kombatants fight fluidly (not fighting as absurdly jerky as they have been for years now), I'm not expecting them to revolutionize anything in the gameplay department. In the department concerning detailed yet over-the-top gore, perhaps, but nothing on the gameplay end.

 

[hansari]

How do you "revolutionize" a fighting game?

 

[Yoshi-Pop]

How do you "revolutionize" a fighting game?

This. Mortal Kombat hasn't revolutionized anything in 20 years(or never if you ask me) I HIGHLY doubt they're starting now.

Still love it though.

 

[Emphraim]

How do you "revolutionize" a fighting game?

That's what I was wondering. Even more than that, how do you revolutionize the online play in a fighting game?

 

[Therumancer]

Hmmm, well honestly the only way to really "revolutionize" fighting games would involve totally redoing the entire online system, which would require massive software changes from Sony/Microsoft along with anything else that the game does.

The reason why I say this is because as things stand now the biggest problem I find with online fighting games is that it's very easy for someone you beat to put a complaint on you for being "unsportsmanlike" and thus be able to avoid ever having to fight you again. This whole thing screws ranking systems and the like along with the disconnects and other issues that really aren't inherant to the games as much as the whole way the online multiplayer works.

Another thing they would have to do is effectively limit the use of certain characters, perhaps by requiring players in ranked matches to have a well rounded knowlege of the entire game itself, and say they can't use a given character again until they have played and/or won a game with every other character on the roster.

I get lynched for pointing things like this out on fighting game forums (on the rare occasions when I do), but I feel that the differance in the learning curve for differant characters is something that needs to be balanced. Face it, guys like Ken & Ryu (in Street Fighter), Ragna & Jin & Noel(in Blazblue), or Kilik & Siegfried & Nightmare (in Soul Calibur IV) are easy to get impressive results with relatively quickly. I mean it doesn't take as much work to develop a zoning strategy based around a powerful projectile user (with an easy to execute set of attacks) as it does to learn other characters who might "rank" higher in overall capabilities but are much harder/complicated to get to work properly.

For all intents and purposes this amounts to your typical player running into a million people playing the same bloody characters, or at least for the first couple months after release (when interest starts to fade, those after achievements begin to phase out, and
only a lot of dedicated players remain).

Whether others agree with me, or my reasoning, there are reasons why people were calling SF IV "Ken Fighter IV". I don't need a long dissertation on how "Ken isn't imbalanced" or "isn't that good a character", or "how easy he is to beat". Trust me, I've heard it all, and probably know more about the nuts and bolts of Street Fighter than many of the people who would be trying to "educate" me. In the end when all is said and done, you still logged in where you'd fight people zoning with Ken, or maybe Ryu or Sagat (though Ken outnumbers the other two).

That's the kind of stuff they need to fix if they want to really revolutionize online play.

Oh sure, some people would utterly hate not being able to keep playing a single character. But from the perspective of rankings (which show overall mastery of the game allegedly) forcing people to need to know the whole game to hit the upper tiers makes a certain
amount of sense.

The other issue is of course dealing with people who disconnect to avoid "cheap losses" (or basically just losing), and of course the abillity of people to effectively avoid people they don't want to risk losing to (and ruining their ranking at the same time). After the beating my rep has taken from people calling me "unsportsmanlike" to duck fights with me on the 360 I have never been able to fully re-construct my 5th star.

 

[maddawg IAJI]

My hopes are not high at all.

 

[Syphonz]

how much can you really revolutionize an online fighting game?

 

[TxMxRonin]

Online is a fighting games Achilles heel.

 

[dochmbi]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elo_rating_system

 

[Jon Etheridge]

Sounds like your standard marketing jargon to me. It would be fun to have about 16 Kombatants (had to spell it that way) all fighting at once doing Fatalities left and right.

 

[Avernus]

Looks like Marketing has taken over Human Resources... still, I'd be happy to be shocked at a revolutionary development in online play, but obviously I don't see that happening.

 

[frank220]

Boon even said he modeled Deadly Alliance, Deception, and Armageddon after Tekken. How are they going to revolutionize something?